Homeland Security

May 2002

Shortly after the Sept. 11 tragedies, MITRE President and CEO Marty Faga appointed Bob Mikelskas, vice president in the Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems (CIIS), and Agam Sinha, vice president in the Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD), to coordinate MITRE’s Homeland Security efforts. Recently MITRE Matters interviewed Mikelskas and Sinha to better understand their role and MITRE’s current and future efforts in support of Homeland Security.

Bob Mikelskas (left) and Agam Sinha (right) have been tasked by MITRE President and CEO Marty Faga to head the coordinating group of center representatives to focus on MITRE’s changing priorities and initiatives generated in the aftermath of Sept. 11. By ensuring that MITRE’s work is coordinated across centers and clients, they both intend to leverage the talents and abilities of the corporation to maximize MITRE’s contributions to the vital Homeland Security mission.

What do you see as your role, and as MITRE’s role, in Homeland Security?

Sinha: One of the continuing goals of MITRE is what we call leveraging the company. MITRE has been involved with Homeland Security activities for individual sponsors in different ways. After Sept. 11, the pace of these activities has increased, the need for exchange of information and exchange of ideas has grown, and the connections between what we have done for individual sponsors have become more complex. The job of the Homeland Security coordinators is to be the conduit, to make sure the whole company is being leveraged, that people are aware of what's going on with our sponsors so we can help each other. That’s the mission.

Mikelskas: We are the coordinators, not the czars, of Homeland Security. We understand that most of the activities associated with Homeland Security are going to occur in the individual operating centers or in the support organizations. Our role is to coordinate those activities and to develop an overall strategy for implementation.

Homeland Security, as a theme, crosses the operating centers more than any area has before. How are you encouraging that kind of coordination?

Mikelskas: As a first step, we have set up a coordinating group with representatives from each center, John Woodward from CIIS, Claudia Ward from the Center for Air Force Command and Control Systems, Stu Starr representing The Washington Center for Command, Control and Communications, David Hubley from the Center for Enterprise Modernization, and Steve McBrien from CAASD. The purpose of the team is to promote an understanding across MITRE of the Homeland Security initiatives and projects within each operating center, to coordinate these activities across the centers as needed, to help shape and implement the overall corporate strategy, and to identify areas where MITRE can contribute. We intend for them to be the catalysts for the sharing of information across centers.

Where can MITRE contribute to the Homeland Security effort?

Mikelskas: There are three basic types of Homeland Security related activities that we need to present as a coordinated MITRE front: ongoing tasks for our current sponsors, new tasks for our current sponsors that are ideally suited to MITRE's capabilities, and developing roles with new sponsors. These challenges require us to have a multi-level approach to strategy.

Sinha: MITRE has some capabilities and unique attributes that make us well positioned to contribute to this effort. As a not-for-profit company that doesn’t compete or sell products, we can be an objective voice. Our role is to work in the public interest, and the breadth of our sponsors allows us to bring expertise from a number of areas to bear on the problem.

Can you give examples of current work that could be applied to Homeland Security?

Mikelskas: For many years, MITRE has designed and engineered systems and techniques for information sharing and exchange. Most recently, the corporation has worked with regional emergency management organizations. The government is trying to figure out exactly how to use all the information assets available at the federal, state, and local levels, including information from the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community nationally, in a way that would be helpful to local emergency agencies. There is a need to share information, and that is an area in which MITRE is very strong. There is a natural role for us in this area.

MITRE has been involved for a long time in work in cyber-security and critical infrastructure protection, mostly focused on cyber-space, and that is an element of Homeland Security.

MITRE has provided technical and analytical support to national security agencies, and certainly Homeland Security is an element of national security.

Sinha: An example of work we are doing with the Federal Aviation Administration is surveillance—the identification and tracking of aircraft. We look at all types of aircraft, both equipped with transponders and without, and in all types of airspace, whether over the ocean, over land, or on the ground. Another example is how the air traffic management system responds to an unusual event, whether terrorist action or engine failure. What procedures should be in place?

MITRE has been involved in creating the Partnership For Public Warning, a new public-private partnership that is bringing the nation’s top emergency warning experts together to resolve national warning message standards, protocols, and priorities. The goal is to ensure that the right information gets out to the public in a time of emergency. These are all traditional roles for MITRE, but areas where our expertise might be useful when applied to Homeland Security.

And in the future?

Sinha: We must resist rushing into action before we consider the implications of the various proposals out there. The concept of "do something" has to be tempered by consideration of what is meaningful and useful.

Mikelskas: The government is trying right now to adjust to this new paradigm and understand how it wants to operate. We don’t want to get out ahead of our customers because they need to be able to do the policy-level thinking. The government is not necessarily ready yet for the information-sharing systems engineering that MITRE can bring to bear because they are still trying to figure out these higher level issues.

Sinha: Right now, there is a lot of emphasis on 9/11, but we have to look ahead and see what other things we have to protect against. Our customers are doing this now, and we will be ready to help them when they need our support.

Will the events of Sept. 11 affect the way MITRE does its business?

Sinha: The Homeland Security initiatives are not going to fundamentally change the way we do business. There is some redirection, but the majority of what we have been doing, we will continue to do because we are integral to the missions of our sponsors. And those missions have not changed.

Mikelskas: MITRE is totally committed to contributing to the nation’s solution to this problem. We are totally committed to making sure that the nation has the benefit of our knowledge and that our talents across all operating centers are devoted to this problem.

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